The present invention is concerned with a stud welding device, in particular with a stud welding gun, provided with the facility for adapting the device quickly to studs of different diameters and/or lengths.
Stud welding devices are employed in the manufacturing industry to weld studs such as T-studs and Christmas-tree studs, for example onto metallic surfaces. It happens quite often, that it is required for studs of different diameters and/or lengths to be welded onto a certain product, for example onto an automobile body. This can lead to problems, if, as is common practice on a production line, stud welding devices with automatic stud feed are used, since these have then to be adapted to suit the respective studs.
For solving this problem it has been proposed in German Publication DE-OS NO. 31 05 987 to design a welding gun such that the barrel of the gun is provided with an insert tube matching the diameter of the stud and that the length of the push rod is adapted to the length of the stud to be welded by an interchangeable spacing sleeve.
The effort involved in adapting such a stud welding gun to a stud of different diameter and different length is however relatively complicated. Not only have the insert tube and the spacing sleeve to be changed, but also the gun has to be disconnected from a stud supply means so that it can be connected to another separating and feeding attachment. If the connection to the separating and feeding attachment is not broken, then the remaining studs have to be removed from the separator for it to be re-filled with the appropriate studs to be welded. This complicated adaption procedure makes it difficult for this stud welding gun to be integrated into an extensive automated manufacturing process. This applies particularly if the stud welding device is not to be actuated manually, but is to be controlled directly by an automatic handling machine, as is common already nowadays in the automobile industry.
The object of the present invention is therefore to provide an improved stud welding device, which can be simply and quickly adapted for studs of different diameters and/or lengths and which can be used in semi or fully automated manufacturing processes in an uncomplicated and economical way.